Swimming

It took a small miracle of logistics just to leave.

Before the trip, I had to arrange coverage for Colin, which should have been simple and wasn’t, because his father treats every childcare request as an opening to negotiate for more control over my life. I had teaching responsibilities stacked on top of my regular job. It’s my busy season at work, and my workplace isn’t the healthiest environment even in the slow months. I’ve been aching for a community of believers here and haven’t found one. And under all of that sits a to-do list that never gets shorter, mostly because I have a wonderful twelve-year-old who is attached at my hip, loves to talk with me, and constantly reminds me to give him my attention…. and I want to give it all to him.

So by the time I got home I was empty in every sense. I dropped my bags by the door and stood there for a minute, not sure what to do with my hands.

Within half an hour my phone started going. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was very late. I let my backpack slide off my shoulder onto the floor and fell into bed fully dressed.

And my first thought, lying there, was this: I haven’t worked out in a week. I should do that tonight. And I haven’t showered in days. I should do that too.

I didn’t do either.

What I did instead was get up and strip the beds and put on clean sheets. I prepped and packed lunches for the next day. Planned meals for the week and made a grocery list. I started the laundry. I cleaned the kitchen. I caught up on email. Then, finally, I passed out.

The other things could wait, I told myself. Tomorrow.

This is normal for me.

I’m used to taking care of everything and everyone, and that night most of it made sense. Colin would be home the next day, and the house needed to be in order for him. Clean sheets, clean kitchen, food in the fridge, lunches ready. That’s what the morning required.

But the weight of it was more than usual, and I noticed it. My friends had spent that same day playing video games or going on long walks. I’m not resentful of that (they have their own loads, and I don’t know what all of them carry). I just noticed the difference. I’m trying to cram whatever I can into each 24 hours, and it never feels like….. enough.

For years people told me the problem was that I didn’t know how to rest.

Maybe there’s some truth in that. But I’ve tried stopping. I’ve tried cutting things out. Neither one solved anything. When you’re in deep water, stopping doesn’t feel like rest. It feels like sinking. Not swimming would drown me just as surely.

So I’ve been asking a different question. Not how to get out of the water, but how God meets someone who has to keep swimming.

David knew what deep water feels like.

“Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched” (Psalm 69:1-3).

What I appreciate about that psalm is that it doesn’t scold him for being in the water. Nobody tells him he got there by poor planning or lack of faith. He simply describes it, in detail, to God. No foothold. Water to the neck. Throat dry from calling out.

I think I needed permission to describe my night that way, too, without immediately adding a lesson about what I should have done differently.

When Peter started to sink, Jesus didn’t send him back to the boat to think about it.

Peter stepped out onto the water at Jesus’s invitation, walked for a while, and then saw the wind and began to sink. He cried out, “Lord, save me.” And Matthew says, “Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him” (Matthew 14:30-31).

Immediately. A hand, first. There is a gentle rebuke afterward about doubt, but notice the order. The rescue came before the lesson. And then “when they got into the boat, the wind ceased” (14:32). They got in together. Jesus didn’t hoist Peter into the boat and stay out on the waves himself. He climbed in alongside him.

I’ve had a lot of people offer me the lesson first. What I keep finding in the Gospels is a Christ who reaches out his hand before he says anything at all.

The battle at Rephidim didn’t stop when Moses got tired.

While Joshua fought the Amalekites in the valley, Moses stood on the hilltop with the staff of God raised in his hands. When his hands were up, Israel prevailed. When they dropped, Amalek prevailed. And Moses’s hands grew heavy, as hands do.

So Aaron and Hur rolled a stone over for him to sit on, and they stood on either side of him and held his arms up, one on each side, “so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun” (Exodus 17:12).

The word translated steady is emunah, the same word used throughout the Old Testament for faithfulness.

His hands were faithfulness until sunset. Not because he found a way to quit the battle early, and not because his arms suddenly grew stronger. Because two people came and held them up.

I read that and I recognize exactly what I’ve been missing. Nobody pulled Moses off that hill. The battle needed him there until it was over. What he needed was Aaron and Hur.

I don’t have an Aaron or a Hur right now, not here, not in the community I’ve been longing for. Ecclesiastes says it plainly: “Two are better than one… if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no other to lift him up” (4:9-10). I’ve been feeling that woe more than usual lately. I don’t think the answer is to put down the staff. I think it’s to keep asking God for people who’ll come stand on either side.

Isaiah’s promise has never been about stopping, either.

“He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength… they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:29-31).

They shall run. They shall walk. The promise assumes the motion continues. And the word renew, chalaph, carries the sense of exchanging or changing, the way you’d change one set of clothes for another. It’s less like taking a nap and more like trading in what’s worn out for something fresh, while you keep going. By far my favorite bible verse since I became a Christian, and I hold that close to my chest.

That’s the strength I’m asking for. Not an exit from the race. An exchange in the middle of it.

I keep telling myself that my own needs can wait until tomorrow.

The night I got home, I fed tomorrow’s version of Colin, cleaned tomorrow’s kitchen, packed tomorrow’s lunch. Everything I did for myself, I pushed off to tomorrow.

When God fed Israel in the wilderness, the manna came each morning, enough for that day. Anyone who tried to store extra found it bred worms and stank by morning (Exodus 16:19-20). You couldn’t save it up and you couldn’t put it off. Today’s portion was for today.

I wonder if I’ve been treating my own portion as the one thing that can always be deferred. Everyone else’s needs get today’s manna. Mine get pushed to a tomorrow that turns into another tomorrow. And Lamentations says God’s mercies “are new every morning” (3:23). Every morning. Including the mornings I’d planned to spend catching up.

There’s a breakfast at the end of John’s Gospel that seems applicable here.

After the resurrection, the disciples had fished all night and caught nothing. In the morning Jesus stood on the shore, told them where to cast their nets, and when they came in, they found He’d already built a charcoal fire, with fish cooking on it and bread waiting.

“Come and have breakfast,” He said (John 21:12).

And only after they’d eaten did He turn to Peter and ask, three times, whether he loved Him, and three times tell him, “Feed my sheep” (21:15-17).

The order is striking. He fed them before He gave them the assignment. Tired, hungry men who’d worked through the night didn’t get a lecture about balance. They didn’t get told to go home and take the day off. They got breakfast, made by the risen Lord with His own hands, and then they got their work.

That night when I got home, I fed the house. I didn’t think about who was going to feed me. I think the answer, at least in that story, is that Jesus Himself built the fire.

Even His famous invitation comes with equipment.

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me” (Matthew 11:28-29). People quote the first sentence and stop. But a yoke is a tool for work. It’s what you put on oxen so they can pull a plow. Jesus isn’t inviting the weary to lie down in the field. He’s inviting them to step into a harness beside Him, where He takes the weight with them.

I think that’s why the advice to rest never fit me. People meant well, but what they described was getting out of the field. What Christ describes is a different way of being in it.

I’m still swimming… and I don’t think the answer is to stop.

I’ve tried that and found only deeper water.

What I’m asking for now is smaller and more specific. A hand on my arm the moment I start to sink. A stone to sit on and someone on either side holding up my arms. Today’s manna, today, even for me. And a fire on the shore with breakfast already cooking, from the One who knows I’ve been out on the water all night.

The next time I get home that late, I’d like to eat first. Maybe even shower. Then I’ll start the laundry.